I’d already tweeted this earlier today, but it’s worthy of expanded cross-posting to the mother-blog:

March, the most wardrobe-challenging of months. I’m shiver-cold in the mornings, and sweaty-ish by late afternoons.

It’s the in-between weather that’s not-quite-Winter, and not-quite-Spring, that makes dressing up such an ordeal for this 31-day span. Which, vapidness aside, is why I think that T.S. Eliot was off by a month in his “cruellest” estimation.

The stats don’t lie: This here blog has been getting a distinct uptick in Web traffic over the past couple of days. And the tracking confirms that the reason is the odd little photo above, which I first used on New Year’s Day 2009.

That year-old post pondered the upcoming chronologically-delivered demise of these goofy double-zero party specs. Based on all the Internet searches landing here, I guess party people aren’t ready to give up the ghost on these glasses just yet.

I hope everyone looking for these oh-10 accoutrements finds a source. Obviously, I’m not selling any — heck, I have serious doubts that the photo on display here is even Photoshopped-free. But at least I can provide a point of reference.

And with that, and with the strategically-set timestamp at the foot of this post (think 24-hour time), I’d say it’s time to usher in the new year-slash-decade…

Over the past couple of weeks, it’s slowly dawned on me that many a modern-day woman has a thing for the late Audrey Hepburn.

And why not? A half-century after her iconic turn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hepburn remains an ideal of simple elegance, eminently approachable and attainable. She evokes a sensibility composed of both sophistication and innocence — a combination that’s considered practically oxymoronic in our more jaded times.

What I can’t figure out, though, is the desire by women to emulate the classic Audrey look, even when it’s not necessarily a natural fit. In separate instances, I’ve been told by female acquaintances (including one via tweet) that they were sold on a dress, hairstyle, etc. because it gave them that Audrey Hepburn quality. In each case, the women in question had physical features that were decidedly unlike Hepburn’s, i.e. curvy, blonde, or olive-skinned. That such a diverse representation of femininity would all aspire to be Audrey says something about the idealization at play.

Along with the real-life examples, I have Penelope Cruz’s recent turn in Broken Embraces on my mind, too. Cruz plays a film-within-a-film role in this movie that’s consciously a Hepburn clone. While she pulls it off nicely, I was reminded that Cruz ordinarily doesn’t come across as Audrey type.

So, what is it? Why does Audrey Hepburn command such devotion among female fans? What’s with all these latter-day Audrey “girl crushes”? My Y chromosome wants to know…

Like a lot of current fashion, my new(ish) winter coat boasts of being optimized for modern-day personal tech, thusly:

One of the interior pockets has a built-in slit, designed to reign in those ever-present iPod/phone headphone cords. Run the cord through that tiny opening, drop the device into said pocket, and no more tangled-up hassles.

Good idea. So why did this coatmaker put a largely decorative button right near this cord-concealing action? It’s right there, on the outer shell of the pocket, in a perfect spot to catch the little bit of wire that’s still exposed. And yes, you guessed it — the earbuds cord connecting my head with my iTouch gets snagged on a regular basis. It’s maybe a little more organized than my usual shirt-pocket placement, but not much.

So much for forward-functional fashion. My search for the ideal ipod-cket continues…

It doesn’t take a shoe fetishist to get wowed over this light-refracting fashion statement for the female foot:

These are shoes that will freak people out. Yes, we know that her “invisible shoe” is basically a wedge made of mirrors, and looks about as comfortable as the inside of Steve Buscemi’s mouth, but there’s really nothing that says “I’m a fashionista” like showing up at a party with your feet gone A.W.O.L.

Pedal camouflage via polished glass. This is what you can expect from a “footwear concept” designer.

There have been so many naked-model ads for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that this latest one, featuring Joanna Krupa, really shouldn’t cause anyone to bat an eye.

Anyone other than the Catholic League, which objects to the whole ornate-cross-as-angelic-bikini imagery. For that matter, Krupa’s work here does inspire me to convert to Catholicism, animal activism, and blondes — almost.

As for that “Be an Angel for Animals” theme, the heavenly wings seem to be incongruent with PETA’s core values:

Is that angel’s wings made from real feathers???? Oh the horror!

Maybe PETA was so enamored of its takeoff on the Victoria’s Secret iconic Angels campaign that it overlooked bird byproducts (real or synthetic, doesn’t matter in terms of visual messaging) in an anti-cruelty ad. Or else avian suffering doesn’t make the ethical-treatment cut.

If the open-collared look on a shirt or blouse makes you feel a tad too guido or floozy, consider the visual language conveyed by the opposite option:

A fully buttoned shirt is the universal costume symbol for “special.” The buttoned-up look is often shorthand for retarded. (I mean this in the clinical sense.) Think Forrest Gump, Billy Bob Thornton’s Karl Childers in Sling Blade, or Sean Penn in I Am Sam. Slow but sincere, they wish to be perceived as serious, fully integrated citizens — and that top button is the key to what the Project Runway set might call their “image management.”

Nerds, eccentrics, and obsessive-compulsives also mark themselves with this over-buttoning aesthetic.

What’s the common thread? Certainly a general uptightness among these types is at play, but it must be something more than that. Maybe it’s a primal fear of exposing the neck. Or an obsession with completeness for completeness’ sake: Every single button on the garment has to be utilized. The personality profiles sync with those ideas. And others recognize such subtle signals.

This also speaks to how commonplace the top-button-off look has become. Once it suggested a casualness that was against the norm; now, it’s the expected sartorial default. The only exception is the required buttoning for wearing a tie, which lends an overall formality anyway.

It’s Web 2.0 gimmicky as all get-out, but who am I to argue with $85K for wearing a year’s worth of corporate swag?

Jason Sadler, 26, a former marketing professional from Florida, founded his own company, www.iwearyourshirt.com, in 2008 with the idea to wear a T-shirt supplied by any company and then use social media tools to promote the firm.

For his human billboard service, Sadler charges the “face value” of the day so January 1 costs $1, while December 31 costs $365.

Sadler said this may not sound like a lot but it adds up to $66,795 a year if he sells out every day, which he did this year. He also sells monthly sponsorships for $1,500, adding another $18,000 to his income.

The numbers certainly add up. And I commend Sadler for creatively linking the dollar amount with the day-of-year tally. I don’t know how much that’ll be undercut by his 2010 plan: Doubling the sponsorship fee for each day by adding a synchronized second t-shirt wearer in Los Angeles (Sadler’s in Jacksonville). Since the main exposure comes from posting photos online, versus the eyeballs that see the t-shirt on the street, I don’t see much advantage to having more than one person wear a shirt.

It’s working so far, though. And whenever the gimmick crashes and burns, at least these two guys will have a year’s supply of t-shirts to keep their wardrobes full.

Over the weekend, I got my hair cut. Nothing remarkable about that, except that it was the first time in more than two months. Yes, I was well overdue, and I do not carry the shaggy look particularly well.

So I was glad to shed the overgrown follicles. As a bonus, I had a quippy response for the inevitable question I knew I’d be asked:

Them: Did you get a haircut?
Me: Yep. Got ‘em all cut.

A goofy joke, but a good one. I remember when I first encountered it: Hand-lettered in word balloons, in a neat-looking black-and-white cartoon poster that I bought toward the end of high school. It was a quirky piece of mass-produced pop art, and for some reason, it resonated with me enough that I bought it, and can remember it pretty clearly so many years later.

I did some search-engining just now in the hopes that an image of that long-ago poster would magically pop up. Alas, I’m afraid the Internet didn’t yield that artifact from my past. The closest I came was the drawing embedded here, which I’m sure is by the same artist who did the poster — the linework is distinctive enough, and perhaps not coincidentally, the original image file was called “haircut”. It’ll have to do.

Nothing says “girly geek” quite like this homemade dress, no doubt inspired by countless hours of Tetris-playing. Frenetic block-dropping never looked so fashionable!

(Via dustbury, who I’m betting saw the same tweet that I did on this)

Amid the recent outrage expressed over the Photoshop flap involving Ralph Lauren’s “too fat” 120-pound model Filippa Hamilton, everyone’s conveniently overlooking the social love-hate dynamic at play:

The fatter the general population, the thinner the idealized woman. And for all the public posturing and blogging, the only force that stopped people from buying clothes and magazines was the souring economy, not righteous indignation over skinny models.

By its very nature, fashion is a business of falsehoods and costumes, all in service to self-definition. The uncomfortable truth about the fashion industry is it has a knack for tapping into unspoken cultural obsessions and taboos. Fashion sets up a rarefied world of perfection that is, in many ways, defined by how much it differs from the mundane, from the norm. And all indicators suggest that as a culture, we hate what we are becoming: fat…

With that in mind, maybe all of the protesting about deluded designers has been wrongheaded. Maybe all of the demands that editors and photographers just use heavier models have been misguided. Because before fashion models will get any bigger, people in general will just have to get smaller.

It’s pretty simple: There’s nothing noteworthy about seeing regular-looking bodies and faces in media, because we see those same unremarkable images in everyday life. If you want to sell something, you do it by showcasing the rare and the desirable. To the extent that “real beauty” campaigns, like Dove’s, stand out, it’s only because they contrast so much with the clutter that is the glammed-up norm.

The exclusivity of beauty is also rooted in socioeconomic class distinctions, with everything from ideal skin tone to ideal body weight defined along haves/have-nots lines (with preferences often reversing, e.g. Botticelli plumpness being affluently desirable in societies where the masses are skinny due to subsistence-level living). As I wrote in this space years ago:

[G]eneral perceptions don’t work that way. The basic law of supply and demand works for societal trends, too: Those who fit the ideal of perfection (or at least desirability) are always going to be in the minority, and “the rest” are going to be a dime a dozen. Scarcity creates value; that’s natural. If every boy and girl were drop-dead gorgeous, then ergo, nobody would be beautiful.

Basically, we all want, and want to be, that which we can’t achieve unto ourselves. It’s twisted, but then, so is fashion.

Having already witnessed the prop-like use of babies as fashion accoutrement, I can’t say I’m too surprised by this next step: Fetish Tots, or “kinky couture for little people”.

If nothing else, this puts a whole new spin on the spanking debate. Does baby’s first word turn out to be his/her safe word?

Yeah, creepy-disgusting, I know. And for more reasons than just the obvious:

I told some friends about Fetish Tots, and they seem to think it’s some sort of artistic statement, not a real business. Even if this particular group is just making a statement, some slimeballs will take the idea and actually sell it to people. Parents of small children are the most gullible of all consumers. There are so many yuppies in this town carrying designer babies as accessories just so they have an excuse to consume more overpriced stuff. Just a few short years ago, all my Burning Man friends were wearing fetish gear and having lots of kinky sex, and guess what? They all have kids now, and they’re dying to dress up the little Baby Burners just like Mommy and Daddy!

Crass consumerism crossed with conformity and kinky-cute couture. Good think most fetishists don’t procreate anyway.

I wonder how the bottoms of my dress shoes manage to get smoother with wear-and-tear? It would make more sense to me that they get coarser.

I guess that’s why, when I’m on the sidewalk, I try to walk around with slight scuffing motions, in an effort to gain more traction. This, despite knowing that it produces exactly the opposite effect. I attribute this irrational behavior to my being a hockey fan, and thus attempting to emulate the traditional goaltender prepping of the crease (known as the “goalie dance” or “building a nest”). Even this is the wrong approach on my part, since the goalie is using his skate blades to rough up the surface beneath him, and my intent is the opposite. Although the end result — a friction-based mooring — is our shared goal.

None of this would have anything to do with tomorrow’s opening night of the 2009-10 National Hockey League season. If anything, it just means I need a new pair of shoes. And maybe some pads.

It’s actually called The Commuter Tie From Thomas Pink:

The clever new design features a small yet subtle pocket on the reverse of the tie. The [iPod Nano-sized media player] is placed in the pocket to avoid having expensive devices on display or damaging the line of one’s suit. An extra fabric loop keeps headphone wires out of sight and close to the body, leaving hands free to pick up a daily coffee or answer that all-important call.

But I’m giving this hundred-dollar neckwear its proper, functional name in my above post title. Because I’ve long wished for a handy iPod-cket that doesn’t dictate my dress-shirt choices. Unfortunately, it sounds like the tie and pocket are too narrow to accommodate a full-sized iPod or iPhone, so that leaves me out. (Could a demand for hanging larger handheld devices off the neck usher in a return to the ultra-wide ’70s-style neckties? I’m simultaneously humored and horrified at the prospect.)

Anyway, I’ve already got far too many ties in my closet. I have started wearing them on a regular basis again after a long hiatus, but that probably won’t last. Although again, if said fashion accessory provides a good way for me to stash my iTouch, then I’ll gladly wear the old neck-noose daily.

I can’t decide just where I’d more want to integrate LEGO technology into my life: In my wardrobe as a geek-tastic customizable plastic-breastplate t-shirt, or in my television viewing with a build-your-own-button-combination remote control.

Well, a million is an exaggeration, even if you count by them two-by-two. But even one exposed boob was probably one too many for some onlookers yesterday, when advocates for National Go-Topless Day marched the streets near Central Park, with bared breasts on display.

And in the Empire State, it’s all nice and legal:

New York is the only state in the country where women can be topless legally, after a 1992 ruling in the state’s highest court. That means any woman can walk around the city at any time with no shirt on.

Among the speakers was Ramona Santorelli, of upstate Rochester, who was the plaintiff in the 1992 case.

“It’s not about baring your breasts,” she said. “But the true meaning is to normalize women’s bodies.”

I could get used to this kind of normalization. Although considering that this Go Topless stunt was organized by the cuckoo-go-nuts Raelian Movement, I think any claims to “normal” are forfeited.

You know you’re an online addict if you’ve got these social-media logo pillows festooning your couch (make that futon — because, c’mon, who are we kidding here?). Plush handiwork by Craftsquatch.

They’re probably too delicate for pillow-fighting, which is a shame — I can’t think of a fairer offline way to settle which community site is mas macho. My weapon of choice would be that Reddit one.

The above hand-crafted neighborhood flier is making the online rounds as a source of amusement. And why not, with such matter-of-fact outrage:

MISSING!!!

(Drawn from memory. May not be to scale.)
[hand-drawing of bicycle] } 20 inches

My bike was stolen from my front lawn last week. It is a one-speed bike with a skull flag and a lightning bolt on it. The lightning bolt and flag may have been removed. This bike was brand new from the store.

NO REWARD

I don’t even want this bike back. I just made these flyers to tell you that I hate you, bike thief. I hope you ride my bike without a helmet and get hit by a monster truck. I hope my bike takes you straight to hell.

As it happens, it seems that the origin of this declaration of two-wheeled hate is a Threadless t-shirt design. And it turns out that the original rage was thoroughly misplaced:

my design MISSING started out as an actual flyer that I put up around my dorm when my bike was “stolen” earlier this year… Later, I found out it had been towed because I chained it to a fence with a “no bikes” sign on it. Whoops!

So much for consigning some bicycling bogeyman to the flames. If anyone’s pedaling straight to Hell, it’s Mr. Missing designer.

This all reminds me of the old “The Kids in the Hall” “Open Letters” bit by Bruce McCulloch. Bruce had only his bike’s front wheel stolen, but that didn’t stop him from calling out his thief as “you human loser”. Given the choice between “I hope my bike takes you straight to hell” and “You human loser!”, I prefer the shorter and sweeter put-down.

(Video of that “Open Letter to the Guy Who Stole Bruce’s Bike Wheel” moment here; I won’t embed it because it seems like whenever I do that with a “Kids in the Hall” clip, it gets yanked from YouTube within a week.)

It’s summer, so it’s time to let your footsies breathe a little. All while holding your breath over yet another outcropping of body-image anxiety:

Summer footwear only increases the opportunities to feel foot shame. Some of the stuffiest workplaces now accept open-toe shoes, and flip-flops are a de facto uniform of the college-aged. Kaleidoscopic pedicures direct the eye downward, as do sandals with such flimsy straps that Manhattanites might as well go barefoot.

Yet a paradox is at play. We paint our toes more than ever, but most of us don’t take the time to care for the rest of our feet. “We pay more attention to our toes than our heels,” said Dr. Marlene Reid, a podiatrist in Naperville, Ill.

This is mainly a female concern. Men do go semi-barefoot, via sandals and flip-flops, more often these days as well, so the more stylin’ metrosexuals need to fuss with male pedicures. But the pressure is with the ladies, because more of their all-situational fashion choices demand foot-baring.

And therein lies the problem, as I lamented long ago:

There are really not that many pretty feet out there. In fact, there are far too many downright ugly ones on display, thanks to this open-toed madness. No matter how many $75 pedicures or toerings administered, ugly feet remain ugly feet. The biggest shame of it is, most women are kidding themselves to the contrary (although I suspect that, deep down, they know they’re not pulling it off).

So if anything, I’m rooting for this feet-first fashion trending to result in a backlash, i.e. people rejecting all the extra maintenance and retreating to cover-up shoes. Out of mind, and (more importantly, for societal-aesthetic purposes) out of sight.

A photo gallery of notably tan-less Hollywood stars conjured up just one thing for me: Vampire chic, catching on.

Oh sure, a trend toward the pale-skin look (which only Caucasians can pull off, barring skin-bleaching) could be attributed to other factors: Skin cancer awareness, an unconscious group-reaction to having a black man in the White House, or even a periodic turn in the cyclical socio-cultural perception of attractiveness. But with all the nosferatu-mania rippling across pop culture, I’m blaming the bloodsuckers.

Perhaps the likes of Kelly Osbourne and Jim Gaffigan are just angling to be cast in the next Twilight spin-off and/or rip-off? Either that, or the palefaces making it obvious that their show-biz success is attributable to dark forces. For instance, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that sheet-white Conan O’Brien has poofy hair that’s reminiscent of that found on Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula”…

Combine sado-masochistic bondage headgear with the soft, comfortable fit of blue jeans, and you’ve got… Well, you’ve got a Wranglers ad that just screams “only in Japan”.

A muffled scream, by the looks of those masks. Good thing denim is a breathable fabric, or else the lack of air-holes for the nostrils might be a problem. Or not, depending on the kinky context. I also like how the mouth area is occupied by a back pocket with the Wrangler patch dead center, conveying the impression of an oral cavity. Not that I’d be brave enough to stick my hand into that pocket…

Just one more fashion-design observation, before my mind gets completely blown: Do you think there’s a zipper in the back of those things — standard sex-wear flourish — or, in keeping with the relaxed-fit motif, a button-fly?

Before you get too weirdly excited, the buzzkill: These gimp-inspired cowls are not for sale. I’m sure these print ad props are proudly displayed as conversation pieces in some studio apartment in Tokyo right now, though.